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Client need: I was approached by my local Village Hall committee, that had a few pages on the Parish council’s website – but they wanted their own website, that was fully responsive, user friendly, modern and integrated with their Hallmaster software.
Technologies used: PHP / MySQL / WordPress (a PHP based CMS) / Hallmaster integration via iFrames & URL Parameters.
What exactly was it? https://astoncantlowvillagehall.co.uk is the domain we used. The website is quite simple, another WordPress site with a few pages and nice animations – however the main reason for the website was to integrate it with Hallmaster. Unfortunately Hallmaster offers no way of ‘fully’ integrating with a website, it only offered an iFrame – which in my experience can be quite clunky. After playing around directly with Hallmaster, I noticed it keeps your data in the URL as query parameters, e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=test. So I thought, there must be a way to utilise a webform on the new website that then updates the Iframe URL dynamically, essentially passing the user’s Dates they want to book the Hall for to the Hallmaster URL inside the iFrame. This was achieved and the client was very happy.
Would you have done anything differently? If there was budget from the Client, it would have been great to scrap Hallmaster and build their own system directly into the website, making it seamless.
Client need: I had just joined a Dungeon and Dragon’s group – and we were struggling to keep in touch and share documents etc. I came up with an idea of a private forum we could use and our group decided that would be the best idea.
Technologies used: PHP / MySQL / WordPress (a PHP based CMS) / PWA (Progressive Web App) / Push Notifications
What exactly was it? https://celestialbrotherhood.co.uk is the domain we used (that was the name of our group). The requirement was fairly simply, an online forum with authentication, but I wanted something that would alert people instantly of an update. That’s where the PWA came in – and the power of push notification’s. I had created a subscription for each type of notification on the forum which users could subscribe to – when the criteria would be met, a push notification would go to their smartphone alerting them of an update (could be a new post, a reply, a comment etc). Other features included, integration to Google Drive to access shared documents, an activity feed and local caching to your device (via PWA).
Would you have done anything differently? I quite enjoyed this one, as I had a personal investment. Not much I would have changed but maybe if it was a native application it would have been more user friendly. The PWA aspect was buggy and notifications didn’t always work.
Business need: The college had an outdated, non responsive, sluggish intranet for the students. They wanted to have something more appealing to students that would be their hub for anything they needed. I was only working on the helpdesk at the time, but offered that I could create this with the assistance of another colleague.
Technologies used: PHP / MySQL / Joomla (a PHP based CMS) / SSO / IIS
What exactly was it? We decided to use a CMS as the barebones for the Intranet to save us time from creating it from scratch – the old one was created on an old on premise version of SharePoint. The main requirement was to provide SSO (Single-sign on) right into the Intranet, which will be the home page. From there it would point to everything they need. We decided to make it use big panels as buttons, coloured to each section they required – e.g. moodle was orange. Less text, more graphics and some animations.
Would you have done anything differently? Having the skills today, It would have been great to make the intranet external – allow students to view everything from home without the need for a VPN. Create from scratch and not rely on a CMS.
Business need: The Company had just had a new LMS (Totara) – Learner Management System implemented, and was migrating at renewal 1000s of customers from there existing LMS. One of these customers had their own LMS, and wanted a similar tailored experience with the new system. The current supplier put out a quote for this, but I decided we could do it in house to save £40k a year.
Technologies used: PHP / MySQL / Totara (moodle) / WordPress / eCommerce
What exactly was it? Totara is a commercialised version of Moodle – Moodle is a free open source LMS that a lot of colleges and universities use to en-role their students etc. Totara takes that more commercial level. The Platform I created and designed used the existing Totara portal set up by a 3rd party, but had a Wordpress Shop Front-end, where the learners would login and register their staff. Then it would redirect them to the Totara portal with a custom theme to make it seem like they had their own ‘portal’.
Would you have done anything differently? I did actually raise concerns about my solution with the Senior Leadership Team – The 3rd parties solution was the same, but because we did it in house they wouldn’t support it. It may have been more feasible to let them do it, even though it would have cost an additional £40k a year.
Business need: A potential new Client requested us to develop some software that would track their Buses and Students. This would be used to see not only where the bus was, but what student was getting on which bus. If they were getting on the wrong bus the android device would alert them.
Technologies used: Java Maven Web App front end, with a Java API backend with a SQL database. A custom built Android Application on a bespoke Android Device used as the scanner on the bus.
What exactly was it? iGo had multiple parts. The Front End sitting on the Android unit on the bus, would remotely login to a web service hosted by the client – each bus had a separate login. The Front End would also poll the server every 5 seconds with it’s GPS co-ordinates, this was then managed by an administration screen that some staff had access to. The admin area also allowed the user to view a map which contains a real time view of where each bus was – clicking on the bus would then show what student was on that bus at that time.
Would you have done anything differently? This was the only application at IPS which I created on my own due to it’s complexity – in hindsight it would have probably been better to involve some more people in it’s development.
Business need: To keep records of scanned products to ship to another country for analysis, on return – scanning again would show the customers details and keep everything anonymous. Later the project was adapted to include a web service to have a reseller send sale information.
Technologies used: Java Maven Web App front end, with a Java API backend with a MySQL database.
What exactly was it? Nouscan was a essentially an internal web application, 1 web page was designed for a device with a camera – in this case an android phone, allowing the logistics staff to scan bar codes and update the status of that shipment. Another web page had a reporting facility where management staff could check and lookup customers details. Eventually a need was to allow a 3rd party to interact with Nouscan by sending purchase information, a REST API was created to allow this and upon purchase a ‘product’ would be assigned to that customer record, allowing the logistic staff to continue.
Would you have done anything differently? Knowing what I know now, I would have created the front end in React which would have been faster and cached on the device.